Commissioner’s Notes

We’ve made it to week 9; 2/3 of the season is done and the playoff picture is nearly set. I didn’t watch a lot on account of the great fall weather and the UT bye week, so I won’t have a lot to say here except to recount where the standings leave us and preview the playoffs.

Week 10 Matchups

This is our last week of regularly scheduled PVP matchups. After this we will go into the playoffs.

• Bob (5-4) v Bruce (3-6)
• Dan (3-6) v Zach (7-2)
• Dylan (6-3) v Jacob (3-6)

Playoff Picture

As of this week, the top 3 are set: I have a 1-game lead over Dylan with the tiebreaker advantage for the Orange pod bye, Bob has a 2-game lead over Dan and Bruce for the White pod bye, I have a 2-game lead over Bob for the overall #1, and Dylan has a 3-game lead on the rest of the pack, so he gets the #3 spot as the highest-ranked wild card.

For the remaining 3 players, Bruce, Dan, and Jacob are tied and none of them play each other, so it could very well come down to tiebreakers. The tiebreakers that can decide this are already set based on previous weeks, so we can list out all the scenarios:

The first tiebreaker is head-to-head record among all players who are tied. In a 3-way tie, Bruce is 3-1, Dan 2-2, and Jacob 1-3, so Bruce wins. In paired ties, Bruce beats Jacob because he swept him, and Dan beats both of them because he split with both but has the higher margin against either.

Games of the Week

• Tuesday: Buffalo @ Miami (OH). These teams are tied, only a game behind 1st and half a game behind 2nd, so they need this one for the conference standings. Unfortunately for them, the other game tonight is first-place Ohio playing last-place Akron, so the loser of Buffalo/Miami is going to be 2 games back with 3 games remaining.

• Wednesday: Central Michigan @ Eastern Michigan, which isn’t a great game, but the others are terrible. Both of these teams have 5 losses, so if bowl games still matter, this is important for both of them to have a chance at bowl eligibility.

• Thursday: James Madison @ Southern Miss, which should be a blowout, but so should JMU’s last 2 weeks.

• Friday: Virginia Tech @ SMU. Virginia Tech has been inconsistent, but so has SMU, and both are a little outside the ACC title hunt but could still conceivably make it.

• Saturday Noon: BYU @ Utah, by far the biggest game of the week. A major rivalry, the top two teams in the conference, and major playoff implications.

• Saturday Afternoon: Alabama @ LSU. Given their remaining schedule, it’s unlikely Alabama will drop another game (@ Vandy, vs UTC, vs Auburn), while it’s very likely that LSU will drop another game (vs Texas, @ UT, @ Arkansas). A win plus not choking will basically guarantee Alabama a playoff spot at 10-2, while a loss would nearly eliminate LSU as-is, and another loss would absolutely do it.

• Saturday Primetime: Miami @ ND. Both of these teams are a bit shakier than their combined 15-1 record might indicate, but this is still a huge matchup.

• Saturday Late Night: either Texas State @ Oregon State or Wyoming @ UNLV. Both games feature teams fighting for a distant second behind Boise State and New Mexico in their conferences, but all 4 teams in these matchups are playing for conference championship berths.

Yet Another Discussion of Luck

I have on numerous occasions written about the luck some of us are getting, so here I’ll take a brief look at how the football gods have decided to reward Bob at the expense of the rest of us.

The top 3 are gaining ground on the pack, as indicated by our clinching of playoff spots, but within that top 3, Bob has had a tremendous run over the past 3 weeks. Based on our lineups, this should have been an extremely close matchup: the projected points based on pre-game spreads would have Dylan at the lowest, +419, followed by me at +559 and Bob at +568. The outcome has been very different from that, as you can see here:

Bob has gained 176 points on me (vs an expected 9) and 270 on Dylan (vs an expected 149); he’s +143 ATS, which is the equivalent of 1 field goal per game for every spot for all 3 weeks. And because he’s finished 1st among the 3 of us all 3 weeks, he’s gaining ground in match play while we’re splitting the match play points and pod-winner bonuses.

And he may try to pull the sympathy card and lament that his one loss in that span came when he finished 2nd in the week and only lost to the overall winner, Jacob. Don’t be fooled: he’s already clinched his pod’s bye, so it doesn’t matter for playoff standings, and that loss meant that Jacob took the Orange pod winner’s bonus point, which helps him against me and Dylan.

In short, I hate this game and I hate his luck.

Commissioner’s Notes

Sadness reigns. Tennessee blows a big road test despite a big comeback. Bob runs away with the week. I lose out on the Orange pod lead by 9 points as the Orange pod loses by a single point. We don’t have a natural topic for this week, so my writeup will take a different approach and look at a couple of different potential rule changes and how they might affect the game.

Across CFB

Choke Job of the Week

I have to go with Tennessee because of the personal bias. This was a chance for a big win in a tough environment, and they had several big plays called back on penalties (some questionable, some not, aka the Josh Heupel Special) but still had a chance to ice the game and turned it over on a terrible 4th down attempt out of a timeout. Winning out is going to be very difficult, and 3 losses would put playoff chances in jeopardy.

Honorable mention goes to my collective lineup, which was projected to win the week but instead lost by almost 100.

Games of the Week

• Tuesday: Delaware @ Western Kentucky, two teams still in the hunt for bowl eligibility, but at 3-4 the loser will have a much tougher battle to end the season.

• Wednesday: Jacksonville State @ New Mexico State. Jacksonville State is tied with Liberty for first in C-USA, and NMSU is tied 3 games behind them.

• Thursday: neither; these are both 12+ point favorites.

• Friday: Baylor @ UCF is a close matchup and is the only one of the day.

• Saturday Noon: not a lot of great games in this slot; Wisconsin @ Iowa is probably the closest.

• Saturday Afternoon: again, not a lot of good choices. Probably South Carolina @ Oklahoma.

• Saturday Evening: this isn’t a great day for matchups, and this is yet another slot without a good one. Army @ Memphis is my pick.

• Saturday Late: Oregon State @ Fresno, but none of these are good. Just get a good night’s sleep.

Alternative Scenarios

Weekly Flip

What would happen if we added a risk/reward component where the lowest score from the biggest loser each week gets flipped? For every week except weeks 3 and 4, someone has had a 20+ point loser, so this is a big flip. Below is a table of the worst games each week, and who flips them.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t change much. The only PVP matchup that flips is this week’s Dan vs Jacob. It moves Bob into a tie for match play, but otherwise it doesn’t change ranks; it only changes the differences between players. The match play and total points changes are listed below.

Multi-PVP

What if we each had 2 matchups in PVP per week, instead of just one? Unsurprisingly, this would even out the PVP to be more in alignment with the match play, but how much? We’ll test a scenario of simply taking what already happened, and adding one game per week.

These are the theoretical matchups I tested (the real matchup that week, plus a second game):

• Week 1: Bob vs Zach, Bruce vs Jacob, Dan vs Dylan; added: Bob vs Jacob, Zach vs Dylan, Bruce vs Dan
• Week 2: Bob vs Jacob, Zach vs Dylan, Bruce vs Dan; added: Bob vs Dylan, Jacob vs Dan, Zach vs Bruce
• Week 3: Bob vs Dylan, Jacob vs Dan, Zach vs Bruce; added: Bob vs Dan, Dylan vs Bruce, Jacob vs Zach
• Week 4: Bob vs Dan, Dylan vs Bruce, Jacob vs Zach; added: Bob vs Bruce, Dan vs Zach, Dylan vs Jacob
• Week 5: Bob vs Bruce, Dan vs Zach, Dylan vs Jacob; added: Bob vs Zach, Bruce vs Jacob, Dan vs Dylan
• Week 6: Bob vs Zach, Bruce vs Jacob, Dan vs Dylan; added: Bob vs Dylan, Jacob vs Dan, Zach vs Bruce
• Week 7: Bob vs Jacob, Zach vs Dylan, Bruce vs Dan; added: Bob vs Dan, Dylan vs Bruce, Jacob vs Zach
• Week 8: Bob vs Dylan, Jacob vs Dan, Zach vs Bruce; added: Bob vs Bruce, Dan vs Zach, Dylan vs Jacob
• Week 9: Bob vs Dan, Dylan vs Bruce, Jacob vs Zach; added: Bob vs Zach, Bruce vs Jacob, Dan vs Dylan
• Week 10: Bob vs Bruce, Dan vs Zach, Dylan vs Jacob; added: Bob vs Jacob, Zach vs Dylan, Bruce vs Dan

The results of those games change the standings to the following:

For a convenient infographic of who beat whom in this format, here’s a heatmap:

I’m strongly considering this approach next year. It smooths out the variance, but still keeps enough that it’s not just a complete remake of the match play.

I would be the biggest loser, going from a 94% chance of the #1 seed to a slightly greater than 50/50 chance of not even getting a first-round bye. Bob would be the obvious winner, going from a 59% chance of a first-round bye to a >99% chance.